Tata Nano AMT Comprehensive Review

When Ratan Tata dreamed of developing the most affordable car on this planet, No one believed a car like Nano would even see the Indian roads. By the time Tata Nano was launched in India, affordable had already become cheap, this may sound like an irrelevant sentence, but the standard of living and mentality of normal middle class had.

Obviously In order to develop the most affordable family car in the world TATA has to compromise on a lot of features that a normal buyer would expect in a car. The Indian Auto industry not only owes Tata for developing the most affordable car in the world, but also Ratan Tata showed willingness vision and dedication can actually make dreams come true.

Unfortunately the market didn’t accept this TATA product and soon the Nano started grounding, But TATA didn’t want to kill this ambitious product and over a period of six years they keep developing it. With new features to match the competition, sitting inside the most advance TATA Nano yet, today I am feeling really proud.

TATA Nano GenX AMT is one of the most affordable AMT cars you can buy on this planet. Well AMT is an affordable option to the conventional continuous variable transmission, the car is driven by the manual transmission, but here a black box and a computer take care of your precise shifting’s. All you have to do is put you knob in D and forget until you have to reverse.

So let’s start with all the new aspects of TATA Nano GenX. There’s no much of a visual changes, in fact, all sheet metal looks the same, overall shape remains the same. But now we have all new designed front and rear bumper. The grill is made up of infinity symbols. Headlights are smoked with Nano engraved on it, just to give u that premium feel. Overall, it’s a Compact size and well proportionate car and now it also comes with an operable rear boot with a storage space of around 100 liter.

The cabin is redesigned and it is a big improvement over the previous model. Nano may look tiny outside, but its big inside. The large windscreen and window makes it feel very airy. The dashboard is all revamped you get a Bluetooth enabled music system. New Gen TATA Steering. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an Indica, zest, Safari or Nano, how TATA engineers manage to put acres and acres of space inside their car is still a mystery.

As the engine is situated at the back, There’s ample of the head and a leg room. The seats are high set, so you get a very commanding driving position. Doors are big and the seats are high set, hence getting in and out of the car is very easy

Even rear headroom is fantastic, Four people can comfortably sit and travel in this tiny car.

Nano GenX AMT is powered by same 600cc 38 horse engine coupled to a five speed AMT or Four speed manual transmission. Driving and zipping in Nano is as smooth as a knife through butter. But you need to grow on to the acceleration, you need to learn when to accelerate and de-accelerate precisely as its not a conventional automatic but an automatic manual transmission. You can feel the gears shifting, there is an observable gap between gear changes and the power is not delivered as soon as you gas it. You can drive it in three different modes, automatic mode where gears changed automatically as per driving conditions; another is M mode, where you can change mode with a flick of the gear lever and the last one S mode where gears are changed in a higher RPM.

Steering is very light and It makes zipping around in traffic very easy. The GenX Nano has the smallest turning radius of 4m for easy maneuverability. You can easily fit it into a tight parking space. In fact, I spent over 8 days with Nano covering 700 kms.

I started from Concorde Motors Worli at a peak timing of 6 pm. All those who know what are the traffic conditions are like at 6-7pm. If you are driving in a tight city traffic trust me, you are not going to pray for any other car than this. A very interesting thing I observed while I was stuck in a traffic that most of the SUV’s, Sedans and other vehicles had only one passenger.

What if we could swap these cars with Nano, there will be ample of space on the road. So this about the traffic but what about on an open road. Surprisingly, its equal fun to drive this car on an open roads, the engine is definitely not very peppy but its decent enough to cruise at a constant speed.

I drove it on express highway, tight traffic and ghats. I was not expecting much from Nano AMT except sheer comfort and surprisingly it didn’t let me down. I was constantly getting fuel economy of 16-18 KMPL.

Owning: Costing mere 3 lakh (with three years insurance and if you are lucky then five years) on the road this car can fit four adults comfortably. First two service are free and running cost goes up to 3-5 Rs. Per 10 kms (Excluding tire cost). These are the true statistics collected from the avid Nano users. You get AMT transmission; Bluetooth enabled music system, power steering. There are many finance companies offering EMI as low as 3500.

Verdict: Tata Nano GenX AMT may not have everything you have ever wished in your dream car, obviously there are some negative points, but it is definitely best value car you can buy in India. It is very versatile and high on practicality.